Monthly Archives: January 2009

Just returned from a weekend in Boston, where I witnessed a spirited evening of new-ish music courtesy of Dinosaur Annex, and had a reve­la­tory Chinese meal courtesy of the Peach Farm. I also took lots of photographs for a class I’m starting, and was eagerly import­ing them when my Aperture library decided to collapse in a heap of corrup­tion. And of course I’d already erased my camera, but hadn’t backed up, so I lost them all. I was espe­cially sorry because there was one of a tub of eels.

In the excite­ment over the actual content of New York Phil’s season announce­ment, I missed that they also unveiled a totally new identity! This makes me inde­scrib­ably happy. Their old logo and graphics were so generic I actually had to remind myself what they looked like— oh, right:

A swoosh. A musical staff, sure, but still trite, corpo­rate, and completely bland, not to mention poorly executed.

The new logo is the polar opposite. The roles of the graphic and the type are reversed; now, the letter­forms them­selves create a sense of motion and excite­ment, and the red line is the anchor (like a baton! I get it). The typog­ra­phy is certainly uncon­ven­tional (it reminds me of a circular saw blade) but I think that’s kind of what the Phil needs right now— an antidote to years of staid, unin­spired admin­is­tra­tion. (Take a look at some beau­ti­ful logo treat­ments at Pentagram’s blog.)

Anyone checked www.whitehouse.gov lately? Change in the air, for sure. There’s even a blog of sorts! The first thing I noticed, I’ll admit, was the font choice: the more elegant and tradi­tional Hoefler Text has replaced Gotham as the Obama campaign becomes the Obama admin­is­tra­tion. Gosh, it seems like H&FJ are the official unof­fi­cial first typog­ra­phers! (Also, unre­lated, but a funny coin­ci­dence: the main headings on this site are set in Gotham and Hoefler Text.)

I remarked to Martin this morning that, of all the histor­i­cal-ness (histri­on­ics?) of the occasion, the most remark­able thing to me is: this is the first time in my life that the pres­i­dent of my country is someone who I can look up to, in a very real way. In addition to the intel­li­gence and charisma so evident when he first entered my conscious­ness, Obama seems like an almost impos­si­ble good person, in that every­thing he says and does is derived from a solid, fibrous moral core. And not the pander­ing, one-sided “morals” the right-wing is so fond of, either, but the real meaning of “morals”: the ability to weigh all the elements of an issue, to see differ­ent perspec­tives all at once, and distin­guish not just between “right and wrong” but see the grada­tions between those poles.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I could really imagine being friends with him.

Also (and I’m really grateful for this level of trans­parency): the inau­gural lunch menu. Mmm, a brace!

Happy new year, rabbit rabbit, everyone. I just tore apart the most deli­cious döner sandwich here in Berlin, where the inim­itable David Kaplan and I are re-tackling Shy and Mighty. We’ve been holing up at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule (whose logo actually did fool me into thinking it was a bad steak­house) where I derive pleasure from playing long stretches of repeated minor chords while our neigh­bors practice Bach and Chopin.

The closest I’ve found to contem­po­rary music here was watching the Phil­har­monic (with Mehta) rehearse Carter’s Three Illu­sions. Who knew that even the Berlin Phil­har­monic strug­gles to keep Carter’s unpre­dictable hockets from spinning off into oblivion? They had less trouble with Strauss and Beethoven (backing up Murray Perahia, who played with impec­ca­ble limpid­ness. No, really, that’s actually how he played!). I just wanted a behind-the-scenes tour of their record­ing setup; there were some­thing like 40 micro­phones hanging over the stage, which were controlled by a tech wielding a boom-box-sized remote.

I love the Berlin subway system. Somehow the lack of turn­stiles makes it seem that much easier to hop on and off (passen­gers are instead subjected to random ticket inspec­tions on board). There are LED displays at many stations that tell you how many minutes until the next two trains (though the older, flip-card ones are more beau­ti­ful, if not as useful). I (often) wonder if anyone at MTA reads this blog.